To paraphrase a popular commercial for Chevrolet cars: The new Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum isn’t your father’s museum. With the recently opened Renzo Piano wing, the Gardner is a new Boston destination.

And, emphasizing its new identity, this summer the museum is featuring “Magic Moments: The Screen and The Eye,” nine unique films by nine experimental artists who over the years have been in the museum’s artist-in-residence program. The films explore complex themes, including historical, political, social, and conceptual subjects. The artists’ visions, documentary and artistic, reflect a thoughtful consideration of technique and challenging topics. A different projection is featured every week. Tickets for the films include museum admission.

Welcome to the glamorous world of the New York art scene. What, you don't have famous artist friends to meet in New York? Not to worry. You're invited to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where "Alex Katz Prints," the featured summer exhibition, will introduce you to the artist's sophisticated circle of family and friends.

Cambridge, MA - When audiences give performers a standing ovation, sometimes it feels obligatory rather than congratulatory. In the case of the four actor/musicians performing in "Woody Sez" at the American Repertory Theater in Harvard Square, the applause and accolades heard at Wednesday’s press opening were not only well deserved, they were rewarded with an encore.

I know that Miss Representation is an important film and I feel bad that I didn’t love it more.  Its mission is to explore “how the media’s misrepresentations of women contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence.” And it makes a strong case. Miss Representation is getting a lot of play at a lot of film festivals as well as through the educational campaign built around it. I just question how crucial the dream of “power and influence” is to most women today.

It is an excellent would-be-mainstream vehicle, what with its high profile talking heads, top production values, and some gut-wrenching statistics: “[T]he United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors.” The stats on violence and abuse are, as always, a never-ending nightmare since we first exposed them in the late 60s. I’m very glad there’s a piece of celluloid trying to get all these points across. But today most women are struggling hard just to secure the basics: the glass ceiling is visible to only a very few at the top.

Quincy, MA – Sonny Ochs has been producing concerts for a long time. A polite reporter doesn’t ask a woman her exact age. But since it’s well known that she participated in the first of many musical events dedicated to her brother Phil in Greenwich Village, New York City, in 1983, let’s just say 28 going on 29 years. She started organizing the shows herself the following year.

Born in Panama City, Antonieta Gimeno is a Dorchester-based community organizer, theater activist, and solidarity worker. Gimeno has joined the Peña Rebelde team for Woman’s History Month to celebrate La Mujer Afro-Latina, the Latina woman of African descent.

The peña takes place this Saturday, March 31, at Encuentro 5 in Boston. RSVP on Facebook here: http://on.fb.me/GSH13j

The Institute of Contemporary Art on Boston’ waterfront is an ambitious museum and, so far, its reach has not exceeded its grasp. Case in point, the two exhibitions installed within weeks of each other, plus a showing of new acquisitions. It’s a bonanza for museum goers.

Figuring Color opened in February and will be on view through May 20. The paintings and works on paper by German artist Charline von Heyl will be around until July 15.

From Jersey Shore to the short-lived All American Muslim to the much glitzier Shahs of Sunset, there seems to be no ethnic community left untouched by the national carny show known as “Reality TV.”

Always dissed or ignored by the mass media—and thus hungry for more attention--the multi-ethnic enclave of organized labor might have been our last hold-out against letting it all hang-out in this shamelessly exhibitionist genre.

But that modest stance is about to change, quite possibly for the worse, on union turf that’s very familiar.

Only two words can describe Rangda’s performance at Church of Boston on Wednesday: mind melt. This super-trio of guitarists Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), and drummer Chris Corsano (Bjork; Jandek) have been gigging together since their 2010 EP release False Flag (Drag City), though this collaboration has been a long time coming.

I have a posse who gathers together at my place for my single annual party to watch the Academy Awards. These are friends from different parts of my life – dance, union, justice struggle, work, the old days – who have jelled into an Oscars machine over many years. Here’s my takeaway from the night.